THE GUARDIAN: AZERBAIJAN HAS A LOT TO LOSE IF IT RESUMES WAR WITH ARMENIA

Panorama.am
19/05/2010

Referring to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, The Guardian writes:

"Would the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, go to war for
Karabakh? It is a big question. The defence minister, Safar Abiyev,
spoke in February of the growing likelihood of a "great war" with
Armenia."

Though, according to The Guardian, due to its energy resources,
Azerbaijan has a lot to lose if it does so.

"The military build-up and aggressive rhetoric is a pressure tactic
of presenting a credible threat, if Armenia does not move. It is
effective in projecting a fear that the war, fresh in the memory,
can restart, but ineffective in forcing a will for concessions. The
public attitude is that because so much has been sacrificed to gain
these lands, giving them back would be a betrayal of the memory of
heroes who died for them," The Guardian writes.

Focusing on Russia’s role in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, ` The
Guardian says there is a fashionable belief that Moscow holds the key
to a Karabakh settlement, but a scenario in which Vladimir Putin calls
the Armenian president, Serzh Sargsyan, and orders him to withdraw
from Karabakh seems truly fantastic.

"In the current stalemate, Russia cannot do more than the US and
France, the other Minsk group co-chairs," the paper says recalling that
Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation,
which, like Nato, operates on the collective defence principle:
an attack against one member is regarded as an attack on all members.

According to the paper, there are few signs that a political culture of
compromise is emerging, since voices of the Azerbaijani intelligentsia
standing against the war are unpopular, as peacebuilding is equated
in public wisdom with surrendering Karabakh to the Armenians. "Those
who advocate peace need to see a readiness from the Armenian side to
make steps towards compromise," The Guardian says.